If you had 24 hours to see the Bay Area …

A sudden, very short trip to New York got me thinking: If I only had 24 hours to see the Bay Area, what would be first on the list?

Here’s the story.

Last week was one of those amazingly fun and busy weeks. My wife was in New York for a conference, leaving my daughter and me home to eat pizza and candy.

Then, when she was on a plane home, I jumped on a different plane to New York and our paths crossed in the air somewhere over Utah.

“Look for my plane,” my wife quipped, “It says United on it ….”

I flew to New York to be on the CBS This Morning Show to steer a segment about the economics of at-home parenting to cage fighting. It was very fun. (The clip to the show is here.)

After the segment filmed, I had about five hours to kill in Manhattan before my flight home. In the span of those hours, I ate five different meals, wandered around Union Square’s farmers market — which makes the Ferry Building farmers market seem somehow small and ordinary and ridiculously overpriced — and then ate some more and hit up the NYMOMA before finally rolling myself onto a plane.

All that hurried wandering around made me consider what I’d do back home in San Francisco if I only had five hours to see the city. Because I like to eat basically everything, but especially cake and ice cream, I’m pretty sure I’d hit the ice cream triangle of Bi-Rite, Humphrey Slocombe and Mitchell’s before dashing over to Pacific Heights for a Bun Mee Vietnamese sandwich. You couldn’t drag me to Fisherman’s Wharf if you sprinkled dollar bills and Pop Rocks on the sidewalk, but in terms of site-seeing, I think I’d also hit up the Palace of the Legion of Honor for the Land’s End views and the art inside (despite still being pissed about their Medusa misinformation).

Because not everyone lives in San Francisco, I’m opening this up to the entire Bay Area and give more time.

Let’s say if you had 24 hours to kill in the Bay Area, what would you see? What would you eat?

MIKE ADAMICK writes at Cry It Out! (www.mikeadamick.com) He’d basically camp out at a frozen custard shop for 24 hours.